The 10th anniversary of the 44-minute shootout between police and two heavily armed bank robbers in North Hollywood reminded me of a bizarre side-story that followed.

At a news conference a few weeks later, police played a supposed audiotape of the gunfire that had been given to them by a San Fernando Valley businessman.

But police subsequently learned it was actually the soundtrack from "Heat," a 1995 heist movie that features a wild gun battle between cops and bank robbers in downtown L.A.

The Valley man admitted the hoax.

And how was the truth uncovered? "One of the officers who was [at the shootout] happened to have seen the movie several times," a police spokesman said at the time, "and he was very familiar with that soundtrack."